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Jay Ehret is on a blogging break and will return with regular posts October 13th. Until then, please enjoy a great line up of guest bloggers.
By Efrain Mendicuti
A few weeks ago I wrote a guest post for Drew’s Marketing Minute about a recommendation I gave to the local Marketing team of a very big Entertainment company. As I delivered a Marketing seminar to their team in Mexico, I cautioned, “Always remember, the most important thing in your marketing mix is you”.
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| Photo Credit: iChaz |
Now I am thinking more about this recommendation and and how it relates to my wife’s business: a small company called Rikolto Café that provides coffee products and services for restaurants, offices, coffee shops and other facilities. I cannot help but conclude that the smaller the company the more relevant this advice becomes.
You see, global organizations have bigger budgets and larger resources that allow them to have specialized people in charge of branding, P.R. and customer experience. My advice becomes relevant to executives in the sense that they need to project on themselves the values that their brands possess.
The Small Business Difference
However, when you think about small organizations, where often the owner is the same person in charge of producing, marketing and selling, you realize that it is not a matter of reflecting the values of their brand. Instead it’s about reflecting their personal values onto their brand; which is probably the best position to be in. Why? Because the business owner can make sure those values come across all their marketing and communication efforts. This is something that larger organizations have a hard time doing.
The funny thing though, is that most big companies today started small. In the beginning, their founders also imprinted their values and beliefs onto the business: think Howard Shultz and Starbucks, Sergei Bryn and Larry Page and Google, Sam Walton and Wal-Mart. The sad thing here is that it seems that once some of them hit it big, they lost the ability to continue to consistently imprint the very values that drove their success. They hired specialists, which, not to say that was wrong, but they let them run wild with their branding. They started doing consumer research and financial statements and stopped listening to their own voice which was telling them: “do not forget what we are all about”.
Now I’m not saying you should not grow your business or that you should not have big dreams, on the contrary! I’m just saying that as you do so always keep in mind your values. Never forget what made you start your company in the first place. And always make sure that everybody in your company buys into your set of values and promises, because believe me, the most important thing in your marketing mix is you.
About the Author: Efrain Mendicuti is an Interactive Marketing Communications professional, trainer, speaker and consultant to companies like GCI Group, The Walt Disney Co., Idea Visual and some of the major advertising groups in Mexico, where he lives with his wife and baby daughter. He is also Head of Agency Relations at Google Mexico. He blogs at The daily stuff and the not so.
Related articles on brands and values:
The Brand Promise
Branding Is Easy, Branding Is Hard
Nine Compulsions That Keep Your Brand Mired in the Pack
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